Changing How I Eat

I’ve been talking with this nutritionist to get help with my eating, I don’t have the best eating habits and I thought getting some professional help might, well, help. 😛

She’s been really good about teaching me how to make small changes that are sustainable instead of giving me a list of drastic changes I should make that I’d never be able to keep up with. Baby steps people!

One of the things she wants me working on is eating small meals every three hours. That was one of the things I was trying to do this past week and lemme tell ya, it takes a huge effort! I don’t like eating that often, or eating that much over the course of a day but I had promised myself I would try so I started trying to eat something every three hours on Sunday, I thought it’d be easier to do on a work day and yay me, I was right lol

It’s not that I have to eat a meal every three hours, I just have to eat something, preferably a combination of protein, fruit or veg and whole grains. Now, eating that combo didn’t happen every three hours but I almost always managed to eat something at the three hour mark. 🙂 Sometimes it was as simple as eating a hard boiled egg, other times it was veggies and hummus, I varied it so I wouldn’t get bored.

Not gonna lie, I was kinda proud of how well I managed on Sunday and Monday but I totally dropped the ball on my days off, sigh. One thing I have managed to do for 3 days in a row is cook an actual meal each day! And not just something I would consider a meal, like a spoonful of peanut butter or some toast but food that I think almost anyone would consider a meal. Go me go! lol

The meals weren’t always the healthiest but they were better than things I have made in the past. I tried to make sure I had that combination the nutritionist had been talking about and I was trying to do this other thing she taught me which is building your meal. The idea is you take the dish you were already going to make and build on to it so it is healthier and more filling and provides more of the nutrients you need in a day. For example, I made a grilled cheese sandwich one day and to build on the meal I also prepped some raw veggies and got some hummus so I ate not just the sandwich but also carrots, baby tomatoes and hummus (the hummus was for the protein). Make sense?

Wednesday I made a dish I don’t have a name for lol it had noodles, asparagus, orange pepper, beefless tips (don’t judge, they are delish!) with a spicy thai sauce. It looked like this…

The beefless tips look burned but they actually weren’t and yeah I know, it doesn’t look that impressive in general but hey, this is me, baby steps! It has veggie, protein and well, not whole grains but a carb type thing so I think it follows the rules I am trying to learn. And sure, maybe I shouldn’t have added a sauce but it needed something to give it some flavour, I may be trying to eat healthy but I’m not trying to piss off my taste buds by depriving them lol

Tuesday I made chicken fingers and veggies which yes I am well aware chicken fingers are not healthy cause they are breaded but they were in my freezer and the meal I made was a better option than the peanut butter and nutella sandwich I was contemplating. 😛

Tuesdays dinner

To make up for eating chicken fingers I made a super healthy dessert of Greek Yogurt with sliced banana in it and a side of some sliced up mango. Only problem was I didn’t get to eat the yogurt and banana because it turned out the yogurt had gone bad, something I discovered with my first spoonful, blech. Least the mango was good! 🙂

Healthy dessert

The dinner I made on Monday wasn’t from scratch, though I suppose neither are chicken fingers lol I made a stir fry but it is a ready made one that is frozen so all I have to do is warm it up, takes a whopping 18 minutes when cooked on the stove top, something even I can manage lol

Mondays dinner

So yeah, I am trying to take what the nutritionist is teaching me and incorporate it in to my daily eating habits. It doesn’t always work but at least I have a bit more structure to my eating. Like today for instance, I had oatmeal for breakfast, well, lunch, umm…late lunch I guess, I ate around 3:30pm so I knew that I should eat again around 6:30pm. Knowing I would be eating again at 6:30pm helped stop me from nibbling on food around 5pm when I was feeling like having a nibble, structure can be your friend! 🙂 Course, you can’t always eat every three hours, life gets in the way, and that messes me up cause if I miss the three hour mark then I feel like I’ve screwed up and that doesn’t feel good at all, sigh. But I’ll get better the longer I try! 🙂

Tags: cooking, eating, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle, help, nutritionist, structured eating